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Dspiae Stainless steel clamp / vice - Review

pjgtech

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Thread owner
Ordered this from our very own John, cheers, a while back.
Had not really had much chance to use it until last couple of days.
As usual from Dspiae, its a nice bit of kit, feels solid and reliable and well made.
It comes in two boxes, the main clamp/vice and the base.
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Although its small, the base is surprisingly heavy and feels very stable. It comes with four little rubber feet which can be stuck on the underside of the base, so will not slip around.
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The packaging is very nice, thick card boxes, nicely printed, and lush thick packing material inside the boxes.
Assembly is a breeze, just clamp together the base and the main body, via one round/ball joint. Insert as many pins as you require, (it comes with eight pins). and cover the pins with the (included) soft rubber tubing, so nothing gets scratched whilst its being held in the clamp.
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You get more than enough tubing to cover all eight pins and a bit more as spare. I decided to just use four pins, as I feel that will cover most circumstances.

The main clamp body is heavy stainless steel and again, feels well made, nice tight tolerances, it does not feel slack or loose at all. You can rotate the main body through pretty much any angle, up, down, left, right, on an oblique or diagonal angle then lock it in place via the thumb turn screw.
The two clamps can be closed or opened by the other thumb turn knob/screw. The open/close mechanism is very smooth, not notchy, and the main threaded bar and two guide bars all seem well made.
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Weight of the assembled clamp and base is 560g, so just over half a kg.
Dimensions are:
Length of base = 90mm
Width of base = 65mm
Height to top of unit (including inserted pins) = 90mm
Pins are 20mm and 8 are included, once inserted into the top of the clamp they protrude by 14mm.
The min clamp distance (with rubbing tubing on pins) between pins = 2mm.
The max clamp distance (with rubber tubing on pins) between pins = 43mm.
If you have two pins at their widest and on diagonal opposite sides you can squeeze a bit more max distance to = 46mm
One of the clamps has a small groove cut into its vertical face to help is clamping round objects, eg: rods or tubing, etc.
There are seven holes on top of each clamp, so 14 in total.

I have now used this clamp for few things, holding for gluing and painting and it seems to work well, the main negative is its small size so would not be suitable for larger models, or assemblies, but its ideal for the small scale stuff IMHO.

Heres a few examples of small stuff being clamped....
A 1:35 scale German figure....
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A 1:35 scale oil drum....
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A 1:35 scale beach head anti tank style obstacle...
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A 1:72 scale plane cockpit assembly....
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Overall I'm impressed with it, its a very nice, very well made bit of kit that will be very useful, especially with those smaller items that need holding in place. There are cheaper and smaller clamps out there, and there are also more expensive and larger clamps out there, but for me, this was a nice compromise on size and quality and cost.
I hope this mini review is of use to someone..... Cheers 8-)
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Nice review. Looks very interesting, but as I mostly do small figures these days it’s not something I will probably buy. Could’ve made good use of it back in my railway days though 👍
 
I’ve been curious about DSPIAE tools. It looks solid and seems well-made.
 
Thread owner
I have a few now (yes, I'm a proper gear tart! Lol) including the mini desk vac, mini leccy sander with various heads and some of their sanding blocks and pads. Its all really nice quality stuff, but its not cheap!
 
I own one of those vices and can reinforce all the comments and observations made by Peter; lovely piece of kit!
Steve
 
Being totally fed up with having to pick things up from the floor due to stiff, (often numb) fingers, I have just ordered one after reading this. I have a few bits from Dspiae, pleased with them all, so looking forward to this as well.
 
Nice review Peter.

I'm intrigued how the ball is retained in the socket?? It looks like it slides in from the side, and is locked by the thumbscrew on the opposite side, but how does tightening the thumbscrew not push the ball out?

Any chance of a pic of the underside of the clamping part?
 
Thread owner
Extra pics of the base and the ball joint for Bob as requested above, its a nice tight fit and holds well once tightened.
I tried to get every angle and every side view in and also the thumb turn screw wound fully out and wound fully in, cheers.
Pics....
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Spiae vice 11july25  (8).jpg
 
Thank Peter, that makes sense now.

I've ordered some metal today, went with EN1A rather than stainless, should be a fun little project.
 
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